


Postponing the Inevitable

by JTR01



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22988140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JTR01/pseuds/JTR01
Summary: Somethings are fated to happen. Somethings must happen. And there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Kudos: 4





	Postponing the Inevitable

Clara liked to believe that I had beaten it. Beaten fate. Beaten my destiny. And I liked to have her believing that. I liked having her believe that the time lords giving me a new regeneration cycle, giving my possibly a thousand new faces, changed anything. But I knew the truth. I wished to every god and goddess of every religion that I didn't know the truth, but I did.

When I had been on Trenzalore, when I was growing old and had protected the town of Christmas for centuries along with Handles, I had known I was going to die. Not just because I had seen his tomb, but because I could feel it. Presumably others had known about it also, but I had known in my bones that the events of Trenzalore were a fixed point. I hadn't known what would happen to Gallifrey, or which armies would remain, but I knew that there was a fixed point in time on Trenzalore, and that moment was when I died. It was an even more certain fact of the universe than lake Silencio.

So I will never tell Clara the truth. The truth would destroy her. Even though I find it harder to be empathic now, I know it would destroy her to know the simple truth. Honestly, I'm surprised that she hasn't realised it herself. She is very bright and is good at understanding the complex, timey-wimey ball that is my life, for a human that is. I guess it is her faith and trust in myself that makes her not doubt how lucky we have been.

I flipped some switches on the console, sometimes just gliding my hand over its smooth surface. I smiled as I recalled how long this place has been my home. I recalled how I first entered this amazing thing, thanks to some help from Clara, and the many adventures that it gave me. I recalled when it had been given an actual body and an actual voice, when we had talked to each other for the first time in our lives. I recalled what she had said to me. She had said the most obvious thing in the universe that I couldn't believe I never saw it before.

She had told me that she took me where I needed to go. Plenty of times I have wanted to go somewhere, but end up somewhere else entirely. I want to see a cluster of galaxies in 3005? I end up fighting cybermen in 1234. I wants to have a small run on mars? I end up in the year 400,000 on a space station about to explode. It has annoyed me for centuries, yet I wouldn't change it. Because my TARDIS is right: I need to be taken to places where I'm needed.

Just like I need to one day go back to Trenzalore. Because with a fixed point in time, you can never prevent it. You can never escape it. One day you will experience it. All the time lord shave done is postpone my fate. Maybe it will happen at a later date, maybe I will be over five billion years old when it happens, but it will happen. Because me and Clara have seen it, we were there. There's a reason the splinters of Clara have appeared during this life, my thirteenth life, the life I shouldn't have. It's because I'm still going to die on Trenzalore, no matter what. As long as my tomb is there, it doesn't matter when it happens.

But I won't let that change anything. I am going to live my life for as long as I've been allowed. Nothing will change. But I can't tell Clara. I can't tell anyone. I can't tell anyone that Trenzalore is my final resting place. Trenzalore is where the Doctor dies. And nothing can change that. Not the time lords, not the black and white guardians, and not even myself. There is nothing I can do but accept the inevitable.

"Are you ok Doctor?" Clara asked. Looking at her sadly, I noticed a tear was going down my cheek. I smiled and rubbed the tear away, hiding the truth like I always do. Because she must never, ever know the truth.

"I'm fine Clara."

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think? In case none of you knew, there is a comic which shows Clara and the Twelfth Doctor meeting one of the Clara clones, which survives instead of dying like many others.


End file.
